


The Beys

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:20:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26635759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Charles takes Max to look at art.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Kudos: 6





	The Beys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stregatrek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stregatrek/gifts).



__

It took time to discover, in Korea, and Charles forgave himself because the pace, the blood… it wasn’t as though he saw much of  _ anything  _ for the first three months except for open wounds. (And no civilian ever lived who knew that battlefield injuries bled in so many awful shades, like open meat markets where flies shimmered on the carcasses like black jewels). The eyes had to become accustomed and when they finally did, the good doctors grieved because looking on such things without reaction… what did that make one? An automaton with a clipboard and the ability to shake one’s head yes (he shall live) or no (let her go; there is no hope here)? And they slept so rarely in those days that even the most terrible question (What if you were wrong? What if she could have been saved?) didn’t keep them awake. 

Eventually, however, he found out that the unlikely friend given to him by the war (everyone joked about the way Maxwell took to him - and  _ stuck _ , despite Charles’ cruel jibes and attempts to keep him at arm's length) had a love for learning that rivaled his own. Maxwell Q. Klinger struggled with reading complex tomes due to dyslexia, but he was bright as a new-minted coin and he remembered whatever anyone troubled to teach him. By war’s end, Charles had taught the boy the skills required to be an excellent nurse and even Margaret had signed off on certifications for various skills, impressed. (And, yes, one night when they had shared drinks after a difficult OR,  _ Margaret  _ had been the first to josh him about how quickly Klinger caught on during their more, ah, private lessons. Her approval, though hard won, had helped Charles to accept himself a little more and to realize that his friendship with his pretty Corporal contained incredible potential. Though entirely too young and too beautiful for him, Maxwell had it in him to be the great love of the surgeon’s life. When Charles ventured as much, Max had simply smiled and gently taken his hand. “Whaddaya think I’d been trying to tell you?” he’d teased, and Charles had spent the entire night learning how to kiss him). 

Returned to the civilized, civilian world, Charles taught his beloved about new things: art and music, literature and dance - and Max listened patiently with bright eyes and asked questions until he understood, translating (when necessary) Charles’ poetic mode of lecturing into something more concise and down to Earth. And he fell in love - fast, hard, unexpected - with certain books or paintings or moments in songs and they became him (and became a part of him) as his dresses did. Charles watched it, rendered breathless every time, and regretted that he hadn’t seen Klinger fall for him the same way. 

On a quiet autumn night when he wasn’t on call, Charles took his dearly beloved out into the cool night to see streetlights and moonlight spill down through the trees and flirt in his dark tresses; the besotted currents shined there like jewels on black velvet and Charles promised himself for the 630th time that he would soon, soon summon the courage to propose. It would not be precisely legal, their union, but he wanted Klinger as both husband and wife, wanted to write to Max’s family for their blessing and to promise them that Max would never want for anything. 

The exhibit was deserted at this odd hour, the guards around the paintings bored and daydreaming about coffee, the museum staff clustered at the desk and gossiping, murmured voices sleepy as the drone of late summer bees. Charles let Klinger lead. The former Corporal was, perhaps, something like a bee in this. He flitted from thing to thing in what seemed too short an interval to take in anything at all (though Charles knew from experience that he  _ did _ ) but then he stopped. The Major smiled and came up behind him, breathed in the black cherries and brown sugar oatmeal scents of Max’s hair, strengthened somehow by the cold. He had made a private gamble that his pretty one would stop here and go still. 

The heavy, dark frame seemed half a gate to hold inside the four bey horses with their impossible faces and living eyes and it was clear from the invisible vibration at the center of Max’s exquisite soul (the one Charles wanted the keeping and protecting of) that he wanted to touch their velvet noses in greeting, to feel them whuffle clover-sweet breaths into his palms. Charles has kissed the center of those palms so often that the imprint of his lips ought to have shined there like a faint stigmata. 

The horses would allow his presence, would commingle with him to share his peace. Charles knew the poem that was written about this painting. He could begin to recite it, but Maxwell still and silent, soft and longing, was art, also. 

“Something terrible happened to the man who painted them,” Klinger said at last. He had this strange gift, Charles had learned. He could take his coat at day’s end and know that he had lost a patient, or hang up his keys and know Charles had bought him a present. 

“He died in the Great War,” Charles admitted, thinking,  _ as you might have died in our war-that-was-not. As I might have.  _ “A cavalryman like our Colonel.” 

Klinger thought that the war had to crush and kill him, this painter; that kind of beauty - the gift of seeing it and making others see it - brought War to its knees. “What was his name, Major baby?”

“Felix Maier.” 

Klinger nodded at the painting as partners might nod before a dance - a graceful little gesture that contained his gratitude, his respect, and acknowledged how the beauty of the oil paint, how its saturation and tint had worked its way beneath his skin to deliver welcome pain. “Thank you, Felix Maier.” He slipped a hand into the Major’s larger one. “Thank you, Charles.” 

They returned to the world then; Charles knew that Max’s heart was full. “Do you know why they were so beautiful, Major baby?” 

_ Because they felt the touch of your dark eyes and aspired to be worthy of your sustained gaze?  _ “Tell me, my dear.”

“Because they’d flick their ears back to listen to you - remember Sophie doing that? - and you could tell them all day what war was… but they’d never believe you. Their hearts don’t have space for killing you do on purpose. Kinda makes you wonder how we could have anymore wars anyway, with such beautiful stuff to look at instead.” 

Charles didn’t tell him that night, but this little speech - an unplanned and unpracticed protest against deliberate killing - led him to become a patron of the arts, a supporter of canvases that encapsulated beauty… and a complete ignorance of purposefully-dealt death. 

That night, he merely held the young man tight against him as brushstrokes on good canvas, watched the living art of his sleeping face, and hoped, in his dreams, that Max’s hands brushed over the living flesh of four beautiful, bey horses. 

End! 

**Author's Note:**

> for Gene for the idea, Mary for the poem & Marc for the painting 


End file.
